Block Bloom

Block Bloom is a tiling puzzle: you have a board and a tray of polyomino pieces, and the board must be covered exactly. Not mostly, not with a gap in the corner — exactly. Every square filled, every piece used.

That exactness is what separates it from block-dropping games it superficially resembles. There is no scoring by degrees and no partial credit. A piece either belongs somewhere or it does not, and the puzzle has a solution which you are looking for rather than a high score you are accumulating.

The pieces are the familiar polyomino shapes — L bends, T shapes, squares, long bars — and the useful habit is to place the awkward ones first. An L with a corner sticking out has very few homes on a partly-filled board, while a two-by-two square will fit almost anywhere. Players who place the easy pieces first tend to end up holding an L with nowhere to put it.

Corners and edges are where most solutions start, because those cells are constrained by the board itself and often only one piece shape can serve them. Working inward from the boundary turns a large open board into a much smaller problem surprisingly quickly.

There is a move budget per level, so it is not purely trial and error: every placement costs a move, and taking a piece back does not refund it. Completing a board blooms the hidden artwork underneath and earns stars — three for a clean solve with no take-backs, fewer if you had to pull pieces back. Stars pay coins, and coins buy hints, magnets and magic placements for the boards that refuse to yield.

The levels are spread across six gardens, and each garden changes the boards rather than just the backdrop. Spring Meadow teaches the basics on small rectangles, Koi Pond brings octagons and notched outlines, Desert Bloom stretches the boards and adds five-cell pieces, Autumn Orchard introduces crosses, Winter Greenhouse has big frames with a hole in the middle, and Moonlit Garden brings hearts and flowers. After the last garden the levels keep coming: earlier boards return turned or mirrored, with a slightly tighter move budget, and never the same board twice in a row. Drag a piece from the tray onto the board (mouse or touch), tap a placed piece to take it back, and on a keyboard press U to undo, H for a hint and R to restart.